


Partners

by Caia (Caius)



Category: DCU, Star-Spangled Kid, Stars and STRIPE
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-09
Updated: 2005-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-03 08:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caius/pseuds/Caia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pat Dugan reflects. References to past sexual activity between a teenage vigilante and his older sidekick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partners

**Author's Note:**

> Set roughly during Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E.; references to events in Infinity, Inc., JLA, All-Star Comics, etc.

There were many things in life Pat Dugan had never properly thought through, of which "Stripesy" was probably a prime example. Fighting crime dressed like a living American flag had seemed like a good idea at the time....but proved to have far less obvious drawbacks than being dangerous and ridiculous.

It had really hardly occurred to him that it would affect his family life. He hadn't _had_ a family life at the time. What he did have was his partner, his employer's son, the precocious child he was "sidekick" to.

But family it wasn't, and Sylvester Pemberton was never his child. It was only intermittently clear that Syl _was_ a child, and if, after a few years of increasingly easy partnership, Syl talked him into sharing his bed a time or two? Well, it might well have been an abomination in the eyes of many, what with them both being men; but they _were_ men, even if Syl still called himself the Kid.

And then it was a new time, and a new world. Pat and Syl went their own ways; Pat married, had a son--Michael--and lost them both; Syl fought alongside the JSA and with the children of those who had once been their peers. And died.

Pat was _old_. Syl, even, had been old, and at the end of his life--far from the day he had talked Pat into his bed, farther *still* from the day the two of them had decided to become the American flag, and thus, inevitably, to become partners--had even stopped being the Kid.

And now there was Courtney. Barbara's daughter. Pat's daughter, if she would have him--and the new Kid. In a costume that looked like...well, in his time, a slightly deranged streetwalker, but Pat had done his best to adapt, and he _knew_ it was no worse than what children Court's age wore to school...on a girl so painfully, painfully _young_.

On his _daughter_.

Pat was too old for this. Dressing up as the American flag was all very well in his youth. All very well for Syl, who'd been the Kid but not a kid. (Not a _girl_. Not Pat's _wife_'s child.)

But for Courtney? She was so young. Younger than _any_ sixteen-year-old had been in Pat's day, or in Syl's, even if she did dress so provocatively. She had Syl's energy, true, but not his brilliance. And Pat wanted to be a father to her, not a partner. Not at _all_ what he was to Syl.

When the alarm went off--as it inevitably did--Pat climbed into S.T.R.I.P.E. To take care of his daughter. To join his partner. To remember, and to forget.


End file.
